How Barn2 Media Recovered $3,000 in Lost Sales with Jilt

For Katie Keith, cofounder of Barn2 Media, finding Jilt was like finding free money. As one of the UK’s leading WordPress and WooCommerce developers, Katie, who runs Barn2 with her husband Andy, was familiar with the challenges faced by eCommerce companies. But it wasn’t until they started selling their own premium WordPress plugins in March 2016 that they began to experience those issues firsthand.

“After designing WooCommerce websites for clients for years, I was already well aware of the issue of abandoned carts, which face all eCommerce sites,” says Katie. Research consistently finds that anywhere from 60% to 80% of shopping carts are abandoned. “I had no doubt that it would be affecting us.”

The plugin is great, however the support is what makes Jilt truly exceptional.Katie Keith

She was right. The average cart abandonment rate for Barn2, which sells its WordPress plugins using Easy Digital Downloads, is 61%. With an average cart value of $75, that meant they were potentially leaving thousands of dollars on the table.

A few months after launching their first plugin for sale, Barn2 began to put more effort into increasing sales. “We had been researching ways to increase conversion rates, and cart recovery is an essential part of this,” says Katie. At around the same time Katie was ramping up her optimization strategy, Jilt launched its EDD integration.

She decided to give Jilt a try — at least for the length of the 14 day free trial. If it works, Katie thought, we’ll pay, if not, no big deal.

“We started to see results pretty quickly,” Katie recalls. “The first recovery was before the end of the initial 2 weeks.”

Katie set up a three email campaign that’s a slight variation of the default Jilt campaign. It consists of:

A first email triggered 60 minutes after a cart is abandoned, that reminds customers to complete their purchase and asks if they have any problems.

Two days later, customers get a second email that includes a 10% discount code and a list of reasons why Barn2 plugins are a good purchase.

Two weeks later, anyone who hasn’t completed their purchase receives a final email asking for feedback about why they added a plugin to their cart but never completed the purchase.

“We intentionally kept this email non-pressured,” says Katie about the final email. “It’s a genuine attempt to get feedback without trying to sell.”

And it’s working. Barn2’s recovery emails have a 28.6% success rate and have resulted in over $3,000 in extra revenue in just a few months, more than covering the cost of Jilt. That’s why Jilt is basically free money for Katie and Barn2: it pays for itself and it adds revenue to the company’s bottom line that otherwise would be lost.

But for Katie, the extra revenue isn’t even the best part — it’s the experience of working with a company that sees her as a partner and not just another customer. “The Jilt plugin is great,” she says, “however the support is what makes them truly exceptional. This is exactly how we aspire to support our own plugin customers, and it’s a refreshing change to see it in action from another company!”